Contact: : Carol Morgan, Publicity Director FOR RELEASE: OCTOBER 2009 Tel: 212-989-3200 | [email protected]

A groundbreaking photographic journey into the heart of an Italian town steeped in culinary tradition that is a tribute to the slow food movement and the everyday pleasures of food. Slow: LIFE IN A TUSCAN TOWN Photographs and text by Douglas Gayeton Introduction by Alice Waters Preface by Carlo Petrini

Author tour and “slow food” dinners in San Francisco, Petaluma, New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, Denver, Boulder, San Diego, Los Alamos. Nationally traveling photography exhibition coincides with the publication of the book.

“Many have tried to explain Slow Food in written words, but few have managed to communicate the essence of this movement as successfully.” —Alice Waters, internationally renowned chef and the co-owner of Chez Panisse, and the founder of Slow Food Nation “These photographs are rich and undeniably authentic…that goes beyond the boundaries of nations and languages and represents the principles at the heart of the Slow Food movement.” —Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town gives us a visual and written window on a rapidly disappearing world, ruled by the land, the seasons and simple interactions. Industrialized food is breaking the web that connects us intimately to what we eat at a cost to our health and our environment.” —Robert Kenner, director, producer, Food, Inc.

SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town (October; $50.00; Welcome Books ISBN 978-1-59962- 072-5) is an unprecedented photographic personal journey into the heart of hidden Tuscany that celebrates the principles that define the Slow Food movement and pays tribute to the region’s kaleidoscope of vibrant characters, whose shared culture revolves around the everyday pleasure of growing, preparing, and eating food. With an anecdotal charm reminiscent of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, Douglas Gayeton’s interplay of pictures and words conveys a thrilling narrative that transports you halfway around the globe to the charming town of Pistoia, nestled in the outskirts of Florence. There we meet the mushroom hunters and sheep farmers, the winemakers and fishermen, the bakers, butchers and chocolate makers whose lives are profoundly bound to the rhythms of nature. It is a riveting story told in a riveting way: each image comprised of multiple photographs taken over a period of time that can range anywhere from ten minutes to several hours, and layered with Gayeton’s handwritten notes, recipes, facts, and sayings. With this process, Gayeton has managed to introduce the concept of story and time, both compressed and exploded, into his portraits. The result is a photographic approach critics have dubbed flat film; the effect is exhilarating. —Robert Kenner, director, producer, Food Inc.

As Gayeton observes, “What my eyes saw was always grander than any lens could capture…How could I introduce the presence of time, of an emerging and evolving story comprised of not one, but many moments, into a single photograph?” In the accompanying text, Gayeton offers an absorbing first person account of his immersion into rural Italian culture, offering an intimacy that draws us deeper into this romantic and rustic world. A photographer, a pioneering new media creator, a wonderful writer and an award winning documentarian, Gayeton is passionately interested in food, culture, art, and people.

“Images from the day played out repeatedly in my head. Everything came with a story. Even a slice of meat…” –Douglas Gayeton

DOUGLAS GAYETON is a filmmaker, photographer, and writer. His images are held in a number of influential museum and private collections around the world, and have been featured in numerous print and online media, such as Time Magazine. Since the early 90s he has created award-winning work at the boundaries of traditional and converging media for MTV, Sony, National Geographic, and PBS. Recent projects include LOST IN ITALY, a 26 episode interstitial TV series Gayeton created, directed, and shot for Fine Living, and MOLOTOV ALVA AND HIS SEARCH FOR THE CREATOR: A SECOND LIFE ODYSSEY for HBO, the first documentary shot inside a virtual world. Gayeton lectures frequently on art, technology, and sustainability. He is also co- owner, with his wife, Laura Howard, of Laloos Goat Milk Ice Cream in Petaluma, CA. ALICE WATERS is an internationally renowned chef and the co-owner of Chez Panisse, the restaurant where she helped define California cuisine. A passionate advocate of cooking with locally grown and seasonal ingredients, Waters has written several books on the subject. She is the founder of Slow Food Nation, founder of the Chez Panisse Foundation, and an International Governor of Slow Food International. CARLO PETRINI is the founder of the Slow Food movement and author of several books on the subject, including Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair. He is the founder of the University of Gastronomic Sciences, President of Slow Food International and now working extensively with TerraMadre to support farmers and food education projects in poor countries. SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town Photographs and text by A LITTLE BACKGROUND Douglas Gayeton PBS started this project and a Webby grew out of it: Introduction by Alice Waters Photographed over the course of Douglas’ years in Tuscany, SLOW grew out of a October; $50.00 request from PBS to document Italy’s burgeoning Slow Food movement. Gayeton Welcome Books told them that while most Italians didn’t know what Slow Food was, their lives ISBN 9787-1-59962-072-5 176 pages, 11”x13” exemplified the principles that define the movement. Evidence of it was all around 75 sepia toned 4-color images 8 gatefolds him, so why not document the people of Pistoia? Acetate jacket & 4 acetate tip-ins printed When Gayeton makes films he always brings along a still camera. But this time with Text from underlying images when he looked at his prints he added handwritten notes, which he scribbled Includes a sampling of authentic Tuscan recipes directly on the photographs. At first these were meant to remind him of things he’d www.welcomebooks.com/slow seen or heard, but he quickly realized that the act of telling his subjects’ stories with words and phrases (and even Tuscan sayings) was more compelling than the film itself. Exhibitions: *Gayeton’s photographs were featured at Slow Food Nation, the Slow Food movement’s first ever event in the US which took place in San Francisco in September 2008. Over the three days of the event more than 85,000 people passed through the exhibit. Arte Italia opened a SLOW exhibition in Reno (April 30- July 11) and, after travelling, it will return to San Francisco in January 2010. Douglas searched for his Italian family on www.welcomebooks.com/slow his father’s side and found them using this photograph (of his great grandmother’s nephew and his wife) as his guide.